Oduor Obura

Voyages and Reroutings of Childhood in Eastern Africa 

The crossings between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean have been an important waterway in the expansion of the western modernity. The travels thereon are a significant feature in the interactions between Africa and the rest of the world, even before the arrival of the Europeans into eastern Africa.

This paper focuses on the seldom studied confluence of eastern Africa, the Red Sea, Indian Ocean and the early travelers in the 19th century. Whereas previously, the Indian Ocean physically separated but economically joined Africa and Asia, the advances of enlightenment and modernity brought a new variable in the matrix, the presence of European travelers into eastern Africa. There emerged a strong presence of the European in eastern Africa, contingent on absolutist expressions of ways of being, explorational agenda, and extractive policies. The chapter traces the routes, roots, and tropes of the invention of the travelers in ‘the darkness’ of eastern Africa. I will highlight the reconstructions of childhoods as an important event, among others, in these travels.

Towards this end, my paper will examine selected travel writings of three early European writers namely: Richard Burton, Henry Morton Stanley, and May French Sheldon. I will locate the travels in wider arguments of modernity energized by Mignolo’s observation that “universal histories in the past 500 years have been embedded in global designs, today local histories are coming into to the forefront.” The paper will engage conceptions and perceptions of eastern African cultures by the explorers, highlighting the contribution of childhood as a result of the crossings of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.